


for you've been seeing only dreams

by Anonymous



Category: Tokyo Babylon, X -エックス- | X/1999
Genre: M/M, Moving On, POV Alternating, POV Outsider, Post-Canon, Rebuilding, Sakurazukamori!Subaru, The Year 2000, cameos and pov from just about every minor tokyo babylon character, in a perhaps more subtle way than expected subaru is not okay, the sakura tree - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:15:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27299269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: The Sakurazukamori continues on. So does Tokyo, and all those who call it home.
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s), Sakurazuka Seishirou/Sumeragi Subaru
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18
Collections: Anonymous





	for you've been seeing only dreams

**Author's Note:**

> I went into a frenzy and reread what I have on hand of Tokyo Babylon and X after the anime announcement, which ended up being quite the jumble of languages/translations, so please forgive any inconsistent terminology.

Tokyo rebuilds at haste as the century turns, apartment complexes and shopping streets and government skyscrapers cutting into the skyline with _2000_ emblazoned across their sides and signs. The city vaults wildly between impatience to return to life as normal and sheer jubilation at simply being alive after destruction seemed so imminent, so inevitable. People flock back in trickles and droves, salvaging what they can of their old lives in a fledgling city of cutting-edge sustainability. They cry as they embrace those they thought they’d lost. They mourn for those they’ll never again touch, lost to the sea. And eyes cast up to the final surviving pillar, they rebuild. 

Tokyo Tower is the symbol of their hope.

Tonight too the Sakurazukamori perches in its rafters, out of place but without the mind to care.

The request— _order_ —in his hands is so trivial. Pathetically so, in the face of all that must be done in the reconstruction efforts. But thousands of lives had been lost in the conflict, so many of them better than this false prophet building a cult of the disillusioned.

It is no longer a choice. 

He will go.

* * *

Hashimoto Kuniko clutches a handkerchief close as she squints down at the morning paper, eye blurry with sleep. It’s a comfort item, and though she’d like to say she hasn’t needed it in years, the truth is she’s been clinging to it like a charm since the earthquakes started, looking for any extra bit of strength she can find. 

_Cult Leader Found Dead; Authorities Rule Internal Conflict_

It’s to be expected, she supposes. She knows from experience that cults exist only to take advantage of the weak. The faster they’re gone, the better. At some point, after all, someone will realize their prayers are only a tool to keep them compliant. 

But even as she thinks it, something about it doesn’t sit right. She’s not kind enough to say that everyone deserves to find happiness. But she’s not cruel enough to wish death on a stranger, either.

The handkerchief crumples in her hands, frayed and worn thin with the wear of the years.

It’s been a decade, now. A decade, and she doesn’t know if she’s strong enough. Honestly, she doesn’t know if she ever really will be. 

But every day she holds it, twin to the spare she keeps in her handbag, and every day she thinks, without a shred of hesitation— _Today, if I finally see him again..._

* * *

The power of the Sakura Barrow is familiar in all the wrong ways. It doesn’t feel natural in his bones as it sweeps him away from the scene of his crime, urging him to throw remorse to the wind. Illusions were never really his forte. 

But he understands it, in the way of one who’s been trapped under its influence near all his life. He will grow used to it in time. Perhaps he’ll even crave it, same as the taste of smoke on his lips or a phantom touch at his wrists.

(Besides. This is all that remains. The choice to cast off his old name was none other than his own.) 

The sakura fill the space gleeful where he is used to void, come reluctant where he’s used to practicing restraint. To learn is to unlearn. To move not as he wants, but to move as _he_ does, still so vibrant in the Sakurazukamori’s memories.

...It comes easier than it should.

(Especially when it comes to the kill. 

The first--and only--thing Seishirou had ever taught him.

The second spell, ultimately, for which Hokuto had given her life.)

It shouldn’t be so easy for a hand to slide through human flesh. Even the long swipe of a knife will meet resistance. 

A barrier, a charm, the empty air, a human chest. To the sakura, it is all the same. It never provides a challenge.

Not the first time. Not this time, either.

He pretends the blood on his hands belongs to _him_ , instead. That rather than dripping from the heart of this dirty politician, the blood from the bridge has simply never dried. 

He’s not sure if it makes him feel better or worse.

(But it’s nice to see them the way he always pictures them. Stained, gloves so thick with it that the black takes on a reddish hue. It doesn’t make him any less sick to his stomach. But at least this way, he can pretend the reason for it is not so hypocritical.)

* * *

A young man named Yuuya plunges into the ruined streets, searching for things that may not have survived. The small things, the trivial things. The basic human comforts parents in the hospitals are desperate to have but couldn’t dare ask for, fearing the universe might grant them petty wishes in exchange for their children’s lives.

Yuuya thinks it’s only fair to try. Even if he can’t find their mementos—whether lost to the ocean or the debris or the ravages of time itself—the least he can do is let them know they’re heard.

Good people showed him that. If there’s any time to pass that kindness on, he figures it’s now.

He’s combing through the ruins of an old apartment building, the requested plush rabbit in hand and a few things in his backpack he thinks the family might like. He’d gotten in through the second-floor fire escape, the front of the building having collapsed sometime during the quakes. The main stairwell, though, is still firmly intact. He descends with a grin. 

There’s another little girl who’d lived here with her late grandmother. Just transferred into Shinjuku General a week ago, still so full of life despite her loneliness. And every day they’ve gone out to play she’s talked about grandmother’s treasured dolls. _Umi, Hikaru, Fuu._

She’d been too injured to convey that she wanted them brought along. Overwhelmed with the building’s collapse, Yuuya knows the paramedics probably wouldn’t have honored her wish anyway. 

_108, 109…_ Yuuya seizes the handle to _110_ and swings it open without a second thought. 

...He realizes far too late what he’s walked into. All eyes turn on him, bristling with killing intent.

Yelling. Warnings, shouted one on top of the other in a cacophony of noise. In slow motion, the flash of a gun. And faster than Yuuya can comprehend—a gentle wave of black, placing a gloved hand over his eyes in the seconds before he hits the ground.

When he blinks awake he’s stretched out in the street beneath a perfectly blue mid-morning sky. There’s not a drop of blood on him. The rabbit’s still clutched in his hand. Three little dolls are jammed into the front pocket of the backpack resting on his chest, even though he never had the chance to look. 

Yuuya scrambles to his feet, only to find he’s back at the very edge of the ruined district, just a stone’s throw from the hospital. It’s at least an hour’s walk from the apartments. And while the journey tempts him, there’s no reason to take it. If he goes back, he knows what he’ll find. 

_If a good person does something bad, they can still be a good person._ Those kind siblings had shown him that. _But if a bad person does something good..._

_Bad?_ Can he say that, when that figure clad in black had been his savior? 

Yuuya shakes his head. 

He doesn’t have that side of the story. 

He never will.

All he can do is believe.

“Thanks,” he says, to a man that will never hear it.

(And though he couldn’t possibly know, it’s for the better. For if he were to meet that man face to face, his gratitude would be met only with regret from mismatched eyes, ten years too late. _I’m sorry I wasn’t the one to save you.)_

* * *

_None of them will feel the same,_ he realizes—embarrassingly late, if the way illusory branches flutter in the wind like laughter is to be believed. 

This woman had meant nothing. He is no dreamseer, has never envied the burden of those who are. But even he can tell she had no grand destiny awaiting. Still, she’d known of him. She’d accepted her fate and fallen into his arms, and he’d finally understood that the only thing he will ever meet them with is guilt.

_Guilt that there is someone who will mourn them? Or guilt that you cannot feel like the you of your memories?_

He pays the sakura no mind.

_You could have fought,_ he thinks to tell her, before her soul is gone, _These things can be changed, now._

He feels the moment the sakura takes her, and tries to ignore the way his stomach bottoms out. 

_You didn’t have to accept it. Not like me._

* * *

In 1990, she joins a party line and dabbles in the occult, thinking she can understand without being taught, can fight without setting foot on the front lines. (She never finds out what happens to the other two girls. Most days, she decides that’s for the better.) 

In 1999, overtaken by fear she can’t explain, she moves as far from Tokyo as her savings will take her. (Turns out that’s only Yokohama, but it’s distance enough)

She is no warrior. Her past life has no bearing on the ways she lives here and now. 

(Tokyo falls, and she can do nothing but duck her head and pray.)

In 2000, she chooses to move back to Tokyo. The city is in shambles, and no one understands her decision. Frankly, she’s not entirely sure she understands it herself.

But winter is turning fast to spring, and the wind is calling her home. That’s right—she was never a warrior in her last life. And she wasn’t one in this one, either. She’s just another normal _anyone,_ finally heading home.

* * *

“You are not welcome here,” warns the twelfth—the provisional fourteenth—Clan Head. The Sakurazukamori knows this. All the same, it did not stop him from intruding.

Kyoto was left untouched from the horrors that ravaged Tokyo. His childhood home looks much the same as he remembers.

“You are not welcome,” repeats the woman he’d once called family, “Not while you reek of death.”

The Sakurazukamori smiles in a way that is not his. It is not difficult to summon up the thin illusion—he intends not to attack or deceive, but just to give a glimpse into the pale blossoms dusting his shoulders. 

“Even though I’ve just come to say my farewells?”

Her eyes harden. There is no question she’s caught his meaning. It makes it easier on the both of them if he pretends it is his idea. “If you want to pay your respects,” she says, “pay them to the sakura, instead.”

Hokuto does not dwell within the sakura tree. Her soul was in her final spell, gone now forever from this world. What remains is but an afterimage, not worth tarnishing his memories with.

“I will,” he says, for it’s the truth regardless. Phantom branches curl tight against his wrists, amused by his false devotion.

“Go back to your city,” Lady Sumeragi orders, “and never set foot in the Sumeragi house again.”

He dispels his illusion, signaling his compliance, but the smell of the blossoms remain, same as the pressure at his wrists.

“Farewell,” he says, bowing his head as far as the branches at his neck will allow him. Lady Sumeragi pays him no mind. He did not expect her to. 

_We will not mourn you again,_ he thinks he hears as he departs. Or perhaps it’s _cannot,_ obscured by the warble in her unsteady voice. 

(For her sake, he will pretend it is the former.)

Prayers to Hokuto’s memory said, the Sakurazukamori returns to Tokyo, never to return.

* * *

You can buy bananas in Tokyo again. 

The first time Sachiyo sees them, sitting there innocuous on their little shelf, picked over and brown, she practically cries. No—she does cry, silent and soft to herself like a fool.

Once upon a time, someone might have rushed over to her, if only to keep her from causing a scene. They might have been embarrassed for her, or perhaps just mortified by such a public display of emotion. The old Tokyo was all for ignoring those in distress, unless they were directly in front of the banana display and blocking the way for paying customers.

But this is the new Tokyo, where no one can shame a middle-aged woman for crying over mushy bananas when they’ve just done the same two aisles over seeing their late daughter’s favorite chocolate, smelled their late husband’s usual cologne, noticed their late sister’s favorite brand of juice.

Sachiyo likes the new Tokyo. She just wishes her father might have lived to see it, sometimes.

It is the fourth time Sachiyo buys bananas, and she no longer feels the urge to cry for a family that could have been. She goes about her day as usual, cutting through the park to their home that has, by some miracle of circumstance, managed to survive the quakes.

It’s then that she spots the man. He’s sitting on a bench—slumped over it, rather, and if there wasn’t a cigarette burning between his dirty fingers, she might have feared him dead.

Even from here, she can tell he reeks of smoke and is disheveled like someone who hasn’t slept in days. But there’s a spark in him, somewhere. A power in his shoulders and an elegance in his hands as he lights another cigarette that betrays his will to live.

_Just like the rest of us, then._

He’s sitting directly in her path, Sachiyo realizes. She has a choice to make. 

(Though really, she’s known what she’s going to do since the second she saw him.)

She hands him a banana, silent and unapologetic. His gaze flicks to her, questioning but dull. She can’t quite meet it. She doesn’t want to cause a scene. Old habits, she thinks, or something of the sort.

He doesn’t say thank you.

Sachiyo supposes that’s for the best. She walks away. Just two strangers helping each other out in this strange new world. She’s sure it happens every day. But just before she turns the corner, just before he’s out of sight, she sneaks a glance behind. And that man—that gaunt, lifeless man, whose coat hangs off his shoulders as if he hasn’t eaten in weeks—is slowly, quietly, finishing off the last of his fruit.

* * *

_I don’t want to do this,_ thinks the Sakurazukamori, sometimes, when he is at his weakest and the stars above at their brightest. Apathy towards the world is difficult to keep when it is no longer on the verge of ending. 

_This is what he wished for you,_ remind the petals dancing at his fingertips, the branches curled around his neck. _His final desire. You would deny it?_

He does not answer. He never does. There is no point—not when the sakura would never allow him to stop. The petals mustn’t turn white once more, so neither shall he.

* * *

Tokyo is difficult to navigate when you have no use of your eyes. In the past, he’d had things memorized—thirty steps to the street corner, ten to the convenience store bread rack, six to his front door—but that is a map of a world that no longer exists.

Now he lives in government housing in a mostly-reconstructed neighborhood, and he has nothing but his partner to lead him.

Which is why, when his partner nearly lunges off his leash, barking frantically, the blind man feels panic in a way he’d thought escaped him.

A few steps tap off the sidewalk, deliberate before him. The blind man frowns. He hadn’t heard them, before. He hadn’t been aware there was anyone else on the street.

“I’m sorry,” he says, rather perplexed, “the old boy never does this.”

“It’s fine,” answers a voice, familiar despite its lower tone, its unexpected roughness. He prides himself in never forgetting a voice. It takes a moment, tracing the sound back to a Tokyo that wasn’t just construction noise. But when he does remember, it hits him at force.

“Your friend,” he asks abruptly, “were you ever able to find him a partner?”

A rustle of shifting fabric. A faint breath. He knows that means something more than just no. 

“That will be me. Until the end,” the voice replies, and unlike the child who’d promised to stay at his dearest friend’s side, this is a withering tone. Resigned. Defeated, even.

The blind man does not ask. Even if he does, he senses this old friend will not answer. So he says the only thing he can--“I wish you happiness.”

An aborted breath. An exhale, laced with something that sounds terribly like _I wished for that, too._ And then nothing but the wind and the soft whine of his partner, crying out for a ghost.

* * *

“I will be your last,” the Sakurazukamori says into the silence of a late night Ueno park. By all appearances, he speaks to no one but the air. But anyone passing by would understand, somewhere deep in their bones— _cover your ears and hurry along; these words are not meant for you._

The first of the sakura blooms bristle at the threat. They are dwarfed still by the buds that surround them, but he feels the intent clear as day.

He commits taboo and plucks a flower from a low-hanging branch. “You are mine,” he reminds it with the bitter edge of a laugh, _just as I was always yours._

The sakura roils in anger, but it is far from his concern. Their mutual end will ultimately not be such. So long as the Sumeragis continue on, the Sakurazukamori will one day rise again to stand opposite them. This world will not survive long without balance.

_It will simply be sleep,_ he assures the tree, _a well-earned rest before your rebirth._

The sakura is not convinced. It bursts to full bloom above him, defiant towards his contentment in death. And the Sakurazukamori can’t help it—he laughs. _What irony,_ he thinks, _that your Guardian has spent so long searching for death when you burn with such will to live._

He presses his palm to the trunk and drinks it in. 

He pretends that he can feel his predecessors, thrumming through the tree’s rings. He can’t, of course. Perhaps if he altered a familiar technique, let his consciousness slip away to the sakura’s realm, he might be able to catch a glimpse of the shadows that evade him. But those that hear his call will be repulsed by the Sumeragi blood that pulses through the spell, and the one he wishes to answer never will. 

It is their new game. And, for the first _(the third)_ time, he is fully prepared to let Seishirou win.

He presses his forehead to the bark, trades in apathy for purpose. It is not warm as he’d dared hope, but he feels its will firmly as if it’s his own.

There was only ever one hand he was willing to die on. When his soul is pulled in to join his predecessors, it will be by the very sakura itself.

The Sakurazukamori pulls back, and for a moment—just a moment—it feels as if the tree is reluctant to let him go. But it is not so sentimental. 

“It will just be winter,” he promises to the blossom in his hand, pressing his lips to the petals before leaving them to the wind, “Just the winter before the spring.”

* * *

Kaburagi Mitsuki passes a man on the street. She passes him, walks a few steps, thinks nothing of it—and then it hits her like being dragged from a dream into a hospital bed. She whirls on her heel, practically sprints in her boots to overtake him.

“Subaru,” she calls, “you’re Subaru, aren’t you? Sumeragi Subaru?”

Something glints one his eyes—amber and emerald, mismatched in a way she feels is important to recall—but it is nothing of the kind boy she once knew.

“I’m sorry,” says the man, “I think you’re mistaking me for someone else.”

And maybe she is. Maybe she has no idea who this strange man is, cloaked in smoke and the scent of cherry blossoms. He starts on his way again, brushing her aside without a second thought. But she can’t shake this feeling. If she lets him go, it will be a mistake.

“Then,” she asks, running after him because this is important, something she can’t leave unsaid—“What _is_ your name?”

The man stops delicately mid-step. He does not turn to face her, but she can see his jaw working, as if testing his own name before he can voice it. It leaves her to wonder just what could mean so much that he has to be so sure.

He glances back at her over his shoulder, all golden glint and mysterious smile. “Sakurazuka,” he says, and nothing more.

“But your first name?” Mitsuki calls, voice no more than a whisper. She hates the way it trembles. 

A pause. For a small eternity, she fears he won’t answer. But then, like lightning through the clouds—“Your guess,” he says, “it wasn’t so bad.”

And he sets off again, black coat sweeping out long behind him. 

And Mitsuki can’t let him go. She can’t let him go, can’t let him escape, for if she lets him go now then surely she’ll never see him again—

But she’s frozen in place. She longs to give chase but her feet are leaden, pressed into the ground with force she doesn’t understand. And in a way foreign to her, something in her mourns.

“I’m not broken!” she cries, “I’m not broken anymore! So... So..!!!”

The man doesn’t answer. He doesn’t so much as acknowledge that he’s heard. And until he’s well out of sight, Mitsuki can’t do so much as lift a finger.

Pursuit is useless. She knows that, deep in her bones. The only thing she can do is go home and research.

_It was Subaru,_ she thinks, frantic to herself, _it was Subaru. It was..._

_It was..._

_It was who, again?_

By the time she returns home, she has forgotten the meeting completely.

“I’m home!” she chirps, delighted when her fiancé comes to meet her at the door to sweep her up into a kiss.

_Welcome home, darling._

(She thinks of him no more.)

* * *

The cherry blossoms are in season, and despite himself, the Sakurazukamori can’t help but feel alive. Tonight too he perches in the steel of Tokyo Tower, letting the sakura steal from his palms to dance in the moonlight, free as it has been in centuries.

A healthy pink.

(The sight does not repulse him the way it once did.)

He decides to fall. Not to die, but just to fall. A little flight of fancy, knowing the sakura will catch him. No one chides him for being reckless, for using his power frivolously. Such things are for the Sumeragi, bound to their tradition.

The moment he lands, he realizes his mistake. 

There is a girl, watching him with wide eyes. She cannot be more than eight or nine. The sleeves of her sweater flop over her hands. By all appearances, a normal child. There is no reasonable explanation for why she’s here by herself in the dead of night. 

An instinct not particularly _his_ screams at him that he’s been seen, that a witness is unacceptable, that her soul is forfeit along with her blood—

_This is not a job,_ he reminds it, _I won’t lay a finger on her._

Reluctantly, it settles. The petals dispel. They do not hunger yet. 

“Was that magic?” The girl’s incredulity makes her quiet, but the nights are still so often silent. 

He presses a gloved finger to his lips. “Our secret.”

The girl nods wildly. She’s so enthusiastic, it’s impossible not to smile. “Can you teach me?”

_No,_ he thinks. But he has always been adept at telling kind lies. “One day,” he says, but does not promise. 

The girl nods sagely. She will not forget, but perhaps she will not need to. For when she opens her mouth, out falls a question. “Do you like Tokyo?”

For a moment, he’s taken aback. No one has asked him that for so very long, and he’s not sure how to answer. A decade ago, he’d have said yes. A few months ago, feeling his kekkai dissolve around him on the shards of Rainbow Bridge, he’d have insisted he didn’t care. But now...

“I don’t know,” he answers, if only because she is waiting. 

The girl is undeterred. “Well I _looooove_ Tokyo! It’s so big and pretty and you can see the ocean, and even though the earthquakes were scary, they’re rebuilding our house even better than before. And when everything is all fixed again, momma says she’s going to take me to see a movie.”

And the Sakurazukamori is struck with a feeling. “What’s your name?”

“Kazue!”

“I see,” he says, relieved when the girl does not ask in turn. “Would you like to go up to the observation deck? The top one?”

Her eyes go wide as saucers. “Really? Could you take me up there?”

He nods. “We can’t go inside, but I can still take you to the top.”

She runs to him without hesitation, and the sakura laughs. _Have a little caution, girl,_ they both think to warn. _There are bad men that walk these streets._

She is small, for her age, and he’s able to scoop her up without a problem.

“Hold on tight,” he instructs, waits until her hands have curled into his jacket with all their might. And then they are off, fluttering light into the air as they ascend.

A tiny breath escapes her, reveling in the feeling of being weightless—or perhaps just in the way his steps propel them up the tower’s supports against gravity, the two of them birds in the night.

They perch on the deck’s roof, keeping careful grip of each other’s hands. He has no intentions of letting her fall as they take in the world spread below them.

Tokyo is a chimera of a thing—a half-flooded city and a marvel of modern sustainability being erected further by the day. The skeleton frames of Shinjuku skyscrapers rise like a ribcage from the ashes and the lights of Shibuya beat below. The Yamanote is nearly complete once more.

Despite being destroyed beyond repair, Tokyo is rising anew. 

“It’s beautiful,” Kazue says, breathless once more. And in a part of him that can still stand to be sentimental, the Sakurazukamori can’t help but agree.

A city of love. A city of loss. A city of buildings and people rebuilding, pulling each other up from the sea. The city where he’d first spilled blood. The city where blood had first been spilled for him. 

It will never be the same as the one he once knew. But to this child, one day it will be her everything. 

“Hey,” says Kazue again, with all the force of a woman three times her age, “Do you love Tokyo too?”

The Sakurazukamori—the man who might be Sakurazuka, who is definitely Subaru, who can no longer be Sumeragi—looks down to the lights of Tokyo Tower, shining just the same as they had a decade past. And if he catches a shadow in his sights, well. That is between him and the sakura tree.

“Yes,” he says, answering only a memory, “My reasons are a little different than yours, but… I think I love it after all.”

**Author's Note:**

> I've started wondering about Seishirou's last words again recently, and while I do love a good old-fashioned "I love you," I can't help but wonder if they were perhaps a direct parallel to what Hokuto said to him at the very end: "I think of you as special to me," or "I want you to live"... Roundabout confessions of love from a man who never quite properly understood the concept. Therefore: a rather roundabout fic about Subaru deciding the sakura itself is special to him, and choosing to live.


End file.
